21 Must-Read Articles From Around the Web From Blockchain Bubbles to Chinese Values

I’m constantly scouring the web for good material to read and here’s my latest curated list:

Big Brother

Life Inside China’s Social Credit Laboratory Yikes. China has started to quantify people’s trustworthiness based on their “behaviour”. They then get a social credit score which determines their movements and services they can access.

Blockchain/crypto

In Blockchain We Trust Argues that blockchain is as revolutionary as the railroad, broadband and accounting (yes, accounting). Argues that fake accounts could be a thing of the past if everything is recorded on a trustless decentralised ledger (the blockchain). Never will you be hoodwinked by dodgy corporations. Also, argues that it allows unique ownership of digital assets (such as e-books and music).

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future Umm, you can guess where this article is going. Argues that blockchain doesn’t solve the trust problem – all it does is a create a tamper-proof history of transactions/data. People can still input fake data. Moreover, it argues that you still need to trust something, in this case the software, which is even harder to understand than humans. No wonder bitcoin exchanges have been hacked, smart contracts have been drained of cash and so on.

Bitcoin would be a calamity, not an economy argues that bitcoin won’t replace fiat money. If it did, you’d lose the ability inject liquidity during a crisis, impart deflationary shocks due to limited bitcoin supply and introduce high transaction costs when bitcoin is most needed.

Some Simple Bitcoin Economics an academic paper that introduces bitcoin into a theoretical economy. I don’t understand the paper, but hopefully some readers may.

Tech

The End of Windows Great article on how Microsoft’s CEO Nadella has essentially demoted Windows as a product as they pivot to mobile and cloud tech

The death of the newsfeed “all social apps grow until you need a newsfeed. All newsfeeds grow until you need an algorithmic feed. All algorithmic feeds grow until you get fed up of not seeing stuff/seeing the wrong stuff and leave for new apps with less overload. All new apps grow…” Basically we’re all moving to WhatsApp groups.

Why Chinese Filmgoers Don’t Buy Hollywood’s Values Anymore Shows that Chinese audiences don’t like movies that focus on individualism and liberalism (like “Three Billboards”). Instead they prefer movies that focus on collective effort, patriotism and self-sacrifice. Domestic movies are therefore starting to fare very well in China, but so are Bollywood movies which share many of these values.

Self-Help and Distractions

How to Be a Stoic Live like as Spartan. Visualise loss and death, focus on effort not outcomes, embrace discomfort, pursue virtue.